Education, From The Capitol To The Classroom

Stories about students: How does education policy affect the way students learn and grow? Can schools meet their needs as they balance ramped-up testing with personal changes and busy schedules? And are students who need help getting it?

Stories about educators: How are those responsible for implementing education policy in schools − from classroom teachers, to district administrators, to school board members − affected by changes at the top? And how well do they meet their challenge of reaching students with varying abilities and needs?

Stories about school assessment: With an increased push for 'accountability' in schools, what can test scores tell us about teacher effectiveness and student learning − and what can't they tell us? What does the data say about how schools at all levels are performing?

Stories about government influence: Who are the people and groups most instrumental in crafting education policy? What are their priorities and agendas? And how do they work together when they disagree?

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Stories about money: How do local, state, and federal governments pay to support the education policies they craft? How do direct costs of going to school − from textbooks to tuition − hit a parent or student's bottom line? And how do changing budgets and funding formulas affect learning and teaching?

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Bloomington’s Tri North Middle School Principal Gale Hill says without ISTEP results, it’s difficult to create teacher schedules and rosters for next year.

“I have until June 11 to finish the schedule, so with every day the scores are delayed, it’s that much more trouble with my schedule because we have classes for those students who did not pass the ISTEP Math and ISTEP English/Reading portion,” Hill says. “So I cannot schedule students into those classes until I know who they are.”

Monroe County Community Schools superintendent Judy DeMuth says the testing company has sent the district a list of students whose online exams were disrupted. In essence, DeMuth says district officials will have to add any additional students who experienced testing trouble, sign off on the list and, later, determine whether they’ll accept or reject the score. DeMuth tells StateImpact:

That, in my opinion, handles the short-term crisis. Those are the ones that we can see with our data that they were interrupted. But as I tried to point out this evening, all of our students were interrupted in some form or another, because they had to change the time they were tested and constantly juggle their schedules…

In a perfect world, I would like to see that the state of Indiana invalidates all the scores and they say to CTB, ‘You owe us another year on our contract. This has gone awry, it didn’t work, and we’re going to invalidate this.’ The realism of it is that I believe that the scores will be used in the state of Indiana, and we owe it to our students to do the very best we can to get the most realistic picture of those scores. Although I’ll be lobbying our state superintendent to say all children were affected and we really should invalidate the entire state, she has guidelines, laws, policies she has to live by. The realism is when those scores come out, we owe it to our community and our students to make sure [the scores are] as — I hate to use the word “valid,” but I will — as they can be based on this traumatic situation.